‘The word ‘slave’ is used in this exhibition,” notes a wall text at “Jews in the Caribbean: Four Centuries of History in Suriname and Curacao” at Amsterdam’s Jewish Historical Museum. “The museum is aware of the controversial nature of this term. ‘Slaves,’ as used here, refers to African men, women, and children taken captive and…
A Hanukkah lamp that was recently given to the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam may have one of the most compelling provenances of any Jewish ritual object. The lamp was created by a Christian (Dutch Reformed) silversmith, Harmanus Nieuwenhuys, for the Dutch Jewish community in 1751 — when Jews were still barred from guilds. (Harmanus’…
The 19th century Dutch painter Meijer de Haan (1852-1895), whose life was cut short by tuberculosis, has been so overshadowed by his mentor Paul Gauguin that even New York’s MoMA, which owns Gauguin’s 1889 portrait of de Haan, misidentifies the sitter as “Jacob Meyer de Haan” (sic). More than merely getting de Haan’s name right,…
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